In construction began on the massive Boulder Dam later renamed the Hoover Dam , drawing thousands of workers to a site just east of the city.

In the El Rancho Vegas resort opened on a section of U. Top-drawer talent was booked for its lounges and dozens of celebrities attended its Christmas Dayopening.

Siegel was murdered in , but his vision for Las Vegas lived on: During the s and s, mobsters helped build the Sahara, the Sands, the New Frontier and the Riviera.

Money from organized crime combined with funds from more respectable investors—Wall Street banks, union pension funds, the Mormon Church and the Princeton University endowment.

Tourists flocked to the resorts—8 million a year by —drawn by performers such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Elvis Presley, and by rows of slot machines and gaming tables.

From the s onward Las Vegas enjoyed a military boom as World War II bases gave way to Cold War facilities, most famously the Nevada Test Site, where over nuclear bombs were detonated above ground between and In Howard Hughes checked into the penthouse of the Desert Inn and never left, preferring to buy the hotelrather than face eviction.

Over the next two decades the strip was transformed yet again: Old casinos were dynamited to make room for massive complexes taking their aesthetic cues from ancient Rome and Egypt, Paris, Venice, New York and other glamorous escapes.

In , even as residents faced recession,rising unemployment and a housing price collapse, the city still received nearly 40 million visitors.

We strive for accuracy and fairness. Under Nevada Law, an incorporated town, Las Vegas, cannot annex an unincorporated township.

To this day, virtually all of the Strip remains outside the City of Las Vegas. Much like in other American settled counties and towns throughout the United States, entertainment venues were segregated between black- and white-owned businesses.

With almost all of the businesses owned and operated by whites, Black Americans were barred from entering the venues which remained focused, regardless of their legitimacy or criminality, on entertaining a white-only clientele.

As a result of property deeds, businesses owned by or mainly serving non-whites were confined to clubs on the "west side" of the tracks.

This also was enforced in many of the work positions. Thus, African Americans except those who provided the labor for low-paying menial positions or entertainment and Hispanics were limited in employment occupations at the white-owned clubs.

However, because of employment deals with black worker groups, many clubs favored black workers, and the Hispanic population actually decreased ninety percent from 2, to just by the mids.

Organized crime-owned businesses saw an opportunity in not dividing their clientele by race and, despite property deeds and city and county codes barring such activities, made several attempts at desegregating their businesses in the hopes of putting out of operation the non-white owned clubs and expanding their own market share.

An attempt was made at forming an all-integrated night-club modeled on the Harlem Clubs of New York City during the s and s, like those owned by German-Jewish gangster Dutch Schultz.

It was a very upscale and racially integrated casino that actually competed against the resorts on the Strip, especially the non-white owned strips on the west side.

By the end of the year, the casino closed as Schwartz and his partners had a falling out, but the seeds for racial integration were sown. Many sources have credited Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack as a significant driving force behind desegregation in the casinos.

However, it took political action for racial desegregation to occur. A meeting between the NAACP, the mayor and local businessmen resulted in citywide casino desegregation, starting with the employees.

Many whites were attritioned from positions and their jobs given to the black unions. Along with the rest of the country, Las Vegas experienced the struggle for civil rights.

Activists like James B. Aside from seeing no business advantage to excluding non-white customers from casinos and clubs, the organized crime groups themselves were composed of people of ethnicities Jewish and Italian that faced discrimination from WASP America and thus could understand the plight of blacks.

This was also a driving force behind the integration advocated by ethnic performers such as Sinatra and Martin.

Another big force for equality was Mayor Oran Gragson. Spurred into local politics by a vigilante ring of cops who repeatedly broke into his appliance store, he implemented infrastructure improvements for the minority neighborhoods in Las Vegas, backed the NAACP in its actions, and promoted black workers for jobs.

He also championed the cause of the Paiute tribe that owned a small portion of Las Vegas. Gragson stopped the U. His work helped reverse the decrease of minority populations in Las Vegas.

Local legislation kept up with the national legislation and integration was finally established. The only real violence came as a result of school integration, with violent riots and fights occurring in Clark High School when black gangs and youths began attacking the whites.

Integration sparked white flight from the school district from to That school was then later destroyed. On a percentage basis, Las Vegas and Clark County experienced incredibly high growth rates starting in the s and lasting until the late s recession.

During that period, the population of the city more than doubled in most decades. By , Las Vegas was the largest city founded in the 20th century, [21] and by it was the 28th largest city in the US, with a population of , in the city and nearly 1.

The explosive growth resulted in rapid development of commercial and residential areas throughout the Las Vegas Valley. The strong boom in the resort business led to many new condominium developments all along the Strip and downtown area.

Also urban sprawl development of single-family homes continued across the valley, building the areas of Henderson, North Las Vegas , Centennial Hills, and Summerlin.

The rapid development and population growth both halted abruptly in the late s recession. During this period of time, American author and journalist Hunter S.

Thompson wrote and published his seminal novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas , detailing the experience of his trip to the city.

A total of 85 people died and were injured in what remains the worst disaster in Nevada history. Las Vegas began to become a more commercialized, family-oriented place with large corporations coming to own the hotels, casinos, and nightclubs in place of Mafia bosses.

The megaresort era kicked off in with the construction of The Mirage. Its 3, rooms, each with gold tinted windows, set a new standard for Vegas luxury and attracted tourists in droves, leading to additional financing and rapid growth on the Las Vegas Strip.

More landmark hotels and other structures were razed to make way for ever-larger and more opulent resorts including:. The home mortgage crisis and the late s recession affected Las Vegas' economic success.

New home construction was stalled, and construction projects were either canceled, postponed, or continued with financial troubles. The global financial situation also had a negative effect on gaming and tourism revenue, causing many of the companies to report net loss.

Starting in , the sector began to turn around with the proposal of the Resorts World projects replacing the Echelon currently under construction.

The Alon resort is planned to resume the site formerly the Frontier and originally planned for the Plaza.

Fontainbleau is currently being on the process of being sold and resumed. Wynn Resorts is also planning an additional tower with a central lake planned for and a new arena opened near the New York New York hotel on Many analysts agree that the Las Vegas economy is recovering, with improving conditions in tourism and the housing market for January marks the 19th consecutive month with home sales higher than the same month in the previous year.

In June , a heat wave grounded more than 40 airline flights of small aircraft were grounded, with American Airlines reducing sales on certain flights to prevent the vehicles from being over the maximum weight permitted for safe takeoff and Las Vegas tying its record high at degrees Fahrenheit.

During the late evening of October 1, , Las Vegas became the scene of the deadliest mass shooting committed by a single gunman in the history of the United States.

A gunman opened fire on Route 91 Harvest festival -goers from the Mandalay Bay resort, killing 58 and injuring From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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